Develop effective managers with Viva Insights
Important
This article is for the legacy Workplace Analytics app and does not reflect functionality available on the updated Viva Insights platform. Access current documentation for Viva Insights advanced insights here: advanced insights documentation.
Managers have a large impact on employee engagement, development, and performance, and are pivotal in driving organizational change. Each of the behaviors listed show how your organization compares with others based on industry research and your specific organizational data.
Calculations
The following are the percentage insights, their underlying metrics, and a little about the calculations used for them.
| Behavior | Percentage insight | Metrics | Calculations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Optimize meeting hours | Percentage of your managers' meetings that are structured around decision making | Long and large meetings and meeting hours | The percentage of managers who spend over 50 percent of meeting hours in long or large meetings. Long meetings are longer than one hour and large meetings have more than eight attendees. The percentages are calculated weekly and averaged for the entire time period. |
| Prevent burnout | Percentage of managers who are working after hours for more than one hour each week | After-hours collaboration | The percentage of managers who spend more than one hour collaborating through email, calls, instant messages, and meetings outside of working hours. This percentage is calculated weekly and averaged over the entire time period. |
| Strengthen management pipeline | Percentage of employees who have the potential for managerial roles | Influence | Employees who are currently in non-managerial roles with influence scores greater than or within 10 percent of their immediate manager’s influence score. |
| Promote coaching and development | Percentage of employees who have less than 15 minutes of 1:1 time with their managers each week | Meeting hours with manager 1:1 | The percentage of employees who spend less than 15 minutes of coaching time with their managers each week. To account for different frequencies in coaching, this percentage is calculated monthly and then divided by four for the weekly average. |
| Empower employees | Percentage of employees who have a majority of their meetings attended by their manager | Meeting hours with manager and meeting hours | The percentage of employees who spend over 50 percent of their meeting hours with their manager in attendance. This percentage is calculated weekly and averaged over the entire time period. |
| Foster connectivity | The percentage of managers who have limited cross-group connections | Diverse ties | The percentage of less-connected managers is based on the number of diverse ties they have outside their skip-level manager’s organization and compares that with the total number of managers in the measured population. This percentage is calculated weekly and averaged over the last six months. |
The following defines the organizational data shown in the visual behavioral insights.
| Behavior | Visual insight | Definitions |
|---|---|---|
| Optimize meeting hours | Manager meetings by duration and number of attendees | Shows the percentage of manager meetings based on their type, including: Large meetings with more than eight attendees, long meetings that are longer than one hour, long and large meetings with more than eight attendees and are longer than one hour, and decision making meetings with between two and eight attendees and are less than one hour in duration. These percentages are calculated weekly and averaged over the entire time period. |
| Prevent burnout | Distribution of after-hours collaboration from managers | Percentage of managers based on their weekly after hours collaboration. They are divided into those who spend less than one hour, between one to five hours, and more than five hours collaborating after hours. These percentages are calculated weekly and averaged over the entire time period. |
| Strengthen management pipeline | Distribution of potential manager candidates | An organizational network graph that represents the distribution of current managers and potential managers within your organization, based on influence scores. You can use this insight to evaluate future managers with high influence scores who are currently not in managerial roles. |
| Promote coaching and development | Distribution 1:1 time with managers each month | Shows the percentage of employees based on their monthly average number of meeting hours with managers 1:1. They are divided into employees who have no 1:1s, between zero and one hour, and more than one hour of 1:1s with their manager in a month. These percentages are calculated monthly and averaged over the entire time period. This graph also uses the influence metric. |
| Empower employees | Distribution of manager-employee coaching relationships | Uses the average time employees spend with their managers in 1:1s and the percentage of meeting hours with the manager in attendance. The different manager-employee coaching relationships are grouped by employee time percentages that are weekly averages based on the monthly calculations:
|
| Foster connectivity | Managers and cross-group connectivity | Shows an organizational network graph that represents well-connected managers, less-connected managers, and all other employees based on their network connections within your organization. Enables you to see the impact a manager's network has on engagement and the networks of direct reports. Use these insights to build more effective manager training programs that improve engagement and broader organizational connectivity. |
Take action
You can select See your insights to see ways you can develop effective managers in your organization. Depending on your role, the following are available in addition to the recommendations within Take action.
Opportunity groups - Lists the groups who are most affected and would benefit the most from these recommended best practices or Plans, which are based on your organizational data and industry research.
Explore the stats – The following recommendations link to more in-depth data about your organization's management and coaching or teamwork. In the Take action section for each of the following behaviors, select See your insights > Explore the stats to access them:
Behavior Recommendation Explore the stats Optimize meeting hours Try shorter and smaller meetings Meetings overview(if that link doesn't work, try this link instead) Prevent burnout Reduce meeting hours Teamwork(if that link doesn't work, try this link instead) Strengthen management pipeline Find unexpected leaders Management and coaching(if that link doesn't work, try this link instead) Promote coaching and development Increase frequency of coaching Management and coaching(if that link doesn't work, try this link instead) Empower employees Increase information sharing Management and coaching(if that link doesn't work, try this link instead) Foster connectivity Grow manager connectivity Internal networks(if that link doesn't work, try this link instead) Explore in Power BI - If available, links to Power BI reports for more advanced analysis for one or more of the recommendations.
Plans - Opens a new Plan you can set up relating to one or more of the recommendations.
Best practices
This section describes why each of the following behaviors matter and the top best practices that can help managers be more effective.
- Optimize meeting hours
- Prevent burnout
- Strengthen management pipeline
- Promote coaching and development
- Empower employees
- Foster connectivity
Optimize meeting hours
Long and large meetings are costly and often a waste of manager time. Shorter and smaller meetings provide the best conditions for effective decision making.
The condensed guide to running meetings explains a few new ideas that can help make your meetings more effective, such as if "you want people to have the opportunity to contribute, you need to limit attendance." Ways to optimize meetings:
- Use Teams and OneNote to share meeting notes about decisions and action items as an alternative way to keep your team informed.
- Use Manager insights within Advanced insights to help identify ways to support team behavior.
For more best practices and how to set team meeting rules and policy, see Best practices for meetings.
Prevent burnout
Pressure to "always be on" and long hours can lead to burnout. The amount of time managers spend collaborating outside of business hours is an indicator of burnout risk.
Based on research presented in the Why unplugging from work is more work than we think: "New research and our growing understanding about human behavior tell us two things for certain: that unplugging is more necessary than ever, and that true unplugging is not a single action but a social agreement — a culture shift that employees and companies must create together." Ways to support wellbeing:
- Use Quiet time to view after-hours activity and encourage disconnection from work after the day is done.
- Use the Inline suggestions in Outlook to automatically delay email delivery to align with coworkers' configured working hours.
For more best practices and how to define and share working hours, see Best practices for wellbeing.
Strengthen management pipeline
Potential influencers are often difficult to discover within an organization. Employees who are well-connected and play an important role in sharing information throughout the organization may be effective leaders.
The Measuring your employees’ invisible forms of influence article says that "traditional organizational reporting structures limit managers’ visibility into how their employees are influencing and contributing to other teams. New workplace metrics are needed to help leaders get a more complete picture of this." Ways to leverage influencers:
- Use personal network insights to cultivate influence and the Teamwork tab to see connections, top collaborators, and suggestions on how to improve connections.
- Move cross-functional team collaboration to Microsoft Teams and ask influencers to create Channels in Teams for cross-functional team collaboration and to drive the conversations.
- Consider employees with high potential, not just top performers. Attributes that have contributed to past success may not predict future success. Broaden measures used to identify leaders to include those that assess potential, such as influence ranking.
For more best practices and how to identify and utilize influencers, see Best practices for influencers.
Promote coaching and development
Manager one-on-one (1:1) time can improve engagement and job performance, while lack of manager coaching can cause employee disengagement and attrition. According to the research referenced in What great managers do daily: "A Gallup study found that at least 70 percent of the variance in employee engagement scores is driven by who the boss is."
One of the top best practices for promoting coaching and development is to require that managers schedule recurring 1:1 meetings with their direct reports for 30 minutes at least twice a month and hold them accountable for achieving that goal. See Catch up with your team for help with scheduling and managing your 1:1s.
For more best practices and how to develop a 1:1 conversation series, see Best practices for manager coaching.
Empower employees
Cultivating autonomy and development are essential for employee engagement. When managers empower employees to make decisions and tackle new challenges, enables them to be more effective and reclaim time.
How to boost your team’s productivity explains that "helping your team manage its time well is a critical factor for its success." Ways to increase information sharing:
- Use Teams and OneNote to share meeting notes about decisions and action items as an alternative way to keep your team informed.
- Use Manager insights within Advanced insights to identify ways to support team behavior.
For more best practices and how to set team meeting rules and policy, see Best practices for meetings.
Foster connectivity
Managers who have diverse ties across an organization are typically considered more effective and help their employees build strong networks.
In the Empowering your employees to empower themselves article: "Your employees understand their jobs. They know their tasks, roles, and functions within the organization, and it’s time for you to let them do what they need to do to get the job done." Ways to foster connectivity:
- Create cross-team communities for people with similar interests to share ideas, knowledge, and resources. This can also be done using Teams channels.
- Enable and use the Viva Insights Outlook add-in and Teamwork to add colleagues to your Important people list, receive suggestions to meet, reminders to respond to emails, and complete tasks for these contacts. And urge your team to do the same.
- Create a shared Teams channel to strengthen connectivity through channel interactions about projects, strategic topics, and goals to enable information sharing, brainstorming, and team building.
For more best practices and ways to open your network to your team, see Best practices for manager connectedness.